32 Cadillacs (47 page)

But God was good. God was just.

Walking down the road toward them were
two
Gypsies, all alone, one a tall old crone, the other a tall young man…

“There’s two of the bastards!”
yelled Himmler. He slapped his bat against his palm and started running toward them.

“Get ’em!”
screamed Mary Lonquist, and tightened her grip on her short-handled garden hoe as she broke into a dainty run.

Yes, they would pet them with lead pipes, make them believers with baseball bats…

*   *   *

Coming at them in a sudden rush down the blacktop was a solid mass of local yokels with hoes, rakes, bats, lead pipes, scythes,
their wildly bouncing lanterns illuminating their hate-distorted faces.

“Christ!” yelled Ballard, “it’s the villagers, come to get us! We’re in a goddam Frankenstein movie!”

They whirled and ran for their lives, but it had been a long day and a longer night, and the angry townspeople gained on them
with every stride.

Ballard, chest heaving, said, “Keep going. Get help. I’ll slow them down.”

“No! I’ll stand with you!”

But out of the darkness came snarling a great gleaming pink beast.
“GET IN! GET IN!”
yelled the driver, already tromping on it even as they were tumbling into the backseat.

As Dan Kearny sent the car arrowing away from the angry, frustrated mob, Ballard said bitterly, “So it was
you
in the trunk! You stole this thing from us!”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“But why…” Giselle was nonplussed.

“Why, for old Staley, of course.” Kearny gestured with one hand while driving with the other. “He wants this car, but he couldn’t
keep it if he wasn’t going to die, or at least surrender the crown. But if he could
steal
it back from a couple of
gadje
who stole it from him…”

“You
expected
one of us to grab it at the encampment.”

“One or both of you, sure. I found it hidden in the bushes, had Lulu drive it while I hid in the trunk.”

“So you’re going to just turn it back to him? After—”

“Hell no!” Kearny swung the wheel to send the long sleek car up the road to the top of the bluff where O’B had come to grief
the night before. “We’ll let the village idiots go home before we do anything else.”

He braked the car, killed the engine. They could hear wild music, voices, laughter, singing from the Gypsy encampment below,
carried to them up the face of the bluff on the rising night air.

They walked to the edge and looked down at a hundred gleaming campfires that silhouetted cavorting figures in archaic costumes.
Kearny mused, “What with this car and the insurance money and all the death gifts from the
rom,
I suppose old Staley’ll clear a couple hundred grand from all this.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?” demanded Ballard savagely.

“Why should it, Larry? If fools get taken—”

Giselle said almost dreamily, “What about DKA’s extra hundred-eighty grand? Does
that
bother you?”

“No. We’re going to set up the Daniel Kearny Associates Foundation with that money,” said Kearny airily.

“A foundation?” she said weakly. “To do what?”

“Help Gyppos who want to learn how to read and write.”

Giselle didn’t understand it, but was seeing it all now.

“And who better to tell us who wants an education than—”

“Who better indeed? Staley Zlachi.”

Ballard said almost hoarsely, “King of the Gyppos? Are you nuts? Soft in the head? If he gets his hands on that money—”

“He won’t. We pay the tuition directly to the school—he just advises.” He shrugged. “Hell, maybe I’m just getting old.”

They fell silent, still staring down at the scene below. Distance made it like a childhood dream of summer, a memory of something
never known yet somehow recalled. It was, for that pure moment, a fairy tale brought to life. Dan Kearny sighed.

“Well, we’d better go pick up O’B at the motel. We still got ten Cal-Cit cars to get.”

They walked back to the pink Cadillac, paused with the doors open.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Ballard. “Old Zlachi’s gonna advise us on this foundation, but who’s gonna advise us on where to find
those Gyppo Cadillacs?”

“Zlachi already has. He gets back
this
car only
after
we get the other Cadillacs.”

“You mean he’s selling out his own people.”

“That was the whole idea. To put him in the vise so—”

Giselle demanded, “Dan, when did you decide to—”

“Back in San Francisco, when you told me he wanted a pink Cadillac to be buried in. I figured that just
had
to be a scam on his own people. That’s when I knew I could make a deal with the crooked old bastard.”

Getting into the car, Giselle remembered what a nice old gentleman Staley looked while actually being slippery as a snake.

“If you sup with the devil, Dan’l, you better have a long spoon.”

“I hope Zlachi’s is long enough,” said Dan Kearny.

He started the pink Cadillac. Larry Ballard and Giselle Marc fell into each other’s arms in helpless laughter.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
JOE GORES AND
32 CADILLACS

“A fabulous romp through the twilight world of Gypsies and their arch-enemies, the repomen. Fast, witty, and packed with arcane
street lore, 32 CADILLACS may well be Joe Gores' best book yet.”

—Ross Thomas, author of Voodoo, Ltd.
and president of the Mystery Writers of America

“This excellent novel about Gypsy confidence games and Gypsy scamming, Gypsy cleverness and Gypsy charm, could only have been
written by a Gypsy. Now we know the truth about Joe Gores' ancestors.”

—Paco Ignacio Taibo II, author of
Some Clouds
and president of the International Association of Crime Writers

“Joe Gores shows you just how much fun a Gypsy can have stealing a Cadillac, and how much more fun a repoman can have stealing
it back. Everybody has fun in this book. I don't get to use the word 'rollicking' very often, but now's my chance. 32 CADILLACS
is a rollicker if I've ever seen one. It rollicks all over the place.”

—Lawrence Block, author of
A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
,
winner of the 1992 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Novel